


Understanding (I Should Have Known)

by jazzjo



Series: My Dearest, Eliza (With All My Love, Angelica) [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/F, F/M, Featuring all of the (then-born) Hamilton children, Gen, Post-Reynolds Pamphlet, TW: Minor Panic Attack, Who Eliza was pregnant with when the Reynolds Pamphlet was published?!?!?!, and william, i'm so angry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 02:26:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6265933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzjo/pseuds/jazzjo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in the face of what had torn the rug out of under Eliza, Angelica could still speak in poetic sureties.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Understanding (I Should Have Known)

Angelica quietly slipped her key into the Hamiltons’ front door. Letting herself in, she shut the door silently behind her before treading up the hardwood stairs as lightly as she could. The crescents she had managed to brand into the palms of her hands be damned, she would be there for her sister without the cloud of fury hanging over her head.

Alexander did not deserve his wife, and her sister did not deserve the anger she harboured at this betrayal.

 _‘I told you so’_ had never crossed Angelica’s mind. She knew she had warned Eliza, but all she felt in that regard was a deep-seated sense of failure and betrayal. It hadn’t been enough. _She_ hadn’t been enough.

She had failed her sister.

* * *

As she turned the last corner, past the two, _soon to be three, lord_ , bedrooms that sheltered each of Eliza’s children in turn, Angelica breathed in the last of the savoured silence — the children were not home, thank goodness — before she was faced with her sister’s rattling sobs.

Angelica paused in the doorway, her knuckles grazing the solid wood of the door.

“Eliza,” She murmured, just loudly enough to rouse her sister from her misery momentarily, but not sufficient to startle her.

Her sister turned, rising from her seat on the chair nearest to the bed. Eliza’s lips parted as she made to speak, but no words could find their way past her choking tears.

As rivulets of tears began to make their way down her face anew, Angelica crossed the room in three long strides and took her sister into her arms, running a hand over Eliza’s soft dark hair.

“Betsy—” Angelica started, only to be cut off by the fervent shaking of her sister’s tense frame.

“I’m sorry, Angie,” Eliza choked out, “I can’t stand to hear that name.”

Angelica dropped a soft kiss on Eliza’s temple, an apology quick to make itself known, “Don’t apologise, Eliza. I should have known.”

* * *

  _Indeed, she should have known. She should have seen through Alexander from the very beginning_.

* * *

 

“Come, darling,” Angelica guided Eliza back to the chair, “You must sit. This is all very hard on you, I know, and you must rest.”

Angelica relinquished her embrace around her sister’s slight frame, moving to stand behind her and picking up a hairbrush from the dresser. She pulled the brush through Eliza’s long hair in broad, smooth strokes, accompanying each movement a soft word of comfort.

Her fingers entwined themselves in Eliza’s hair, finding their way with familiarity and beginning to twist and gather in turn. She had always done this for Eliza when they had been young girls, and Eliza had come to her close to tears.

Peggy had always been there, ready to distract their dearest Eliza by regaling her with stories of her day, recounting every embarrassing situation she had managed to find herself caught up in. In turn, she and Eliza would lay with Peggy on her bed when she was blue, Eliza playing with her hair while Angelica read her poetry that she had written herself. 

There had never been a problem that Angelica couldn’t figure out a solution to when they were children; lord, how Angelica wished she could undo all the harm that Alexander had brought unto his family. Unto her sister’s heart. 

“I don’t understand why this was never enough, Angie,” Eliza’s voice quivered as she spoke, “Why we weren’t enough. Why _I_ was never enough.”

* * *

  _But you were, but you were, but you were._

* * *

 

It took all of Angelica’s will, and more still then, to keep her tears at bay as she witnessed her sister be reduced to a weeping mess, her mouth barely shaping itself around the words “I don’t understand,” as she fervently repeated them. As if somehow, if she just repeated them enough, enlightenment would come.

* * *

  _It wouldn’t. Angelica knew._

* * *

“The children—” Eliza started once her voice stilled once more, as Angelica continued to braid her hair back deftly, “Oh, Lord, the children, Angie! What will I tell them? And this child, what will become of him?”

Eliza’s breaths shallowed, her chest rising and falling sharply with every breath as piercing as a razor. Securing the end of the braid as quickly as she could with a hair tie, Angelica whirled around to kneel before Eliza, placing one hand on her sister’s shoulder and the other on her knee. 

“Bethy, I need you to breathe for me, please darling,” Angelica murmured, “Tell me five things you can see.”

Eliza squeezed her eyes shut tightly as she could twice, before she opened them once more and frantically looked around the room, her brown eyes skipping over the most imposing piece of furniture desperately. 

“The window, sunlight streaming in; it’s nearly noon,” Her voice threatened to swallow itself as she struggled to breathe, but Angelica ran her thumb over her knee and nudged her on. 

“That’s two, good, Bethy. Go on.”

“The picture the children made together, last Christmas, hanging on the wall. The door, we just re-painted it after John found his way into some paints. You, Angie, you came for me.”

Her breathing had slowed, slightly, but it was still stilted and gasping. Angelica went on. 

“Of course I came for you, darling,” Angelica assured her, “Four things you can hear?”

Eliza pressed her lips together, swallowing before she spoke, “The birds outside, the wind blowing through the house, your voice and my own.”

“You’re doing great, Bethy, keep breathing,” A pause, before Angelica continued, as she wiped the tears from Eliza’s cheeks, “Three things you can feel?”

“The heat, your hands,” Eliza stopped short, her breath betraying her for a moment, “Pain.”

“Oh, Bethy,” Angelica sighed, her heart aching for her sister, “We’re nearly done, alright darling? Two things you can taste?”

Eliza wrung her hands, the words choppy as she spoke them, “Copper, and honey. The air always tastes like honey around you.”

Angelica smiled for a moment; Eliza had said that since they were children, and it had never failed to confound her. She remembered, that was good. 

“One last thing, darling. One good thing?”

“My children, Angie,” Eliza sighed, her breathing evening out at last, “No matter what.”

Angelica brought her hands up to cup her sister’s face, running a thumb over each high cheekbone to wipe away any traces of the tears that had just fallen. Her sister was steel under all her kindness, Angelica knew that, but even steel can break, or bend, at the least.

At least Alexander had not broken her sister. She could hardly forgive him now; she couldn’t imagine the bounds of her anger if he had managed to break the best thing in both their lives. 

“Angie, what will I tell the children?” Eliza murmured, her voice settling back into despondency, “ _How_ can I tell them? Philip worships his father!”

Angelica took each of Eliza’s hands in hers, kissing her palms as Eliza worried her lip, “I can sit with you as you do, if you’d like. Or I can be the one to tell them. You don’t have to take this all on yourself, Eliza; I’m right here. The children will find out sooner or later, that’s the nature of the world today; you can’t keep secrets like these for long, not from them. It’s better that they find out at home.”

“He had an _affair_ , Angie,” Eliza gasped as she shook her head in disbelief, “When the only thing that Daddy ever asked of him was to be true. How could he?”

“You’ve married an Icarus, my darling. As much as you’ve loved him, and given him, he has found himself flying to close to the sun,” Angelica sighed as she cradled Eliza’s shaking hands, “And he has put you through such unimaginable pain as a consequence.”

Eliza wrenched her hands from Angelica’s grip, her eyes aflame, “How can you speak in such poetic sureties, Angelica? How could you _possibly_ understand?”

* * *

_Oh, my dearest sister, how could I?_

* * *

“I apologise, Eliza. I did not mean anything by it.”

“You always mean something by it, Angelica. Not a word comes from your lips without a second thought,” Eliza sneered, her lips thinning in distaste, “It couldn’t have been John, he hasn’t the gall. What are you hiding?”

“Eliza, please,” Angelica begged. 

* * *

_Not now. Not when I couldn’t bear to leave you alone._

* * *

“Angelica, tell me. My mind may not run as swiftly as yours, but it runs all the same to places I’d rather not fathom.”

Pressing her lips together tightly, Angelica looked down at the hands now curled onto her own lap and shook her head once, solemn.

“It wasn’t Alexander, was it?” Eliza ventured, her voice rising in pitch, “Please, God, Angelica, tell me it wasn’t.”

Angelica rubbed a hand over her face, sinking down to sit on her feet as she tried to find the words, “Eliza, I— It wasn’t Alexander, no.”

“Then?”

“Theo.”

The moment the name left her lips, Angelica crumpled into herself, tears rushing down her cheeks as she awaited her sister’s disgust and rejection. 

Instead, Eliza sank to her knees in front of Angelica, her hand finding her sister’s while Angelica wept in front of her for the first time. 

That sight, however unexpected, was sobering for Angelica. 

Her head snapped up and words immediately burst forth from her lips, “Eliza, what in the world are you doing? Please, get back on the chair. I couldn’t bear it, if anything happened to you. I’d never forgive myself.”

Eliza rose and set herself gingerly back onto the plush chair, her voice steady as she spoke, “Why did you never tell me? What happened, Angie?”

“Fear, my darling. Fear can make us all do things that we would never bear to otherwise,” Angelica conceded, unsure which question she, herself, was answering, “Theo was afraid that she would lose everything. I was afraid I would lose you. At the end of the day, I wasn’t enough to make that fear go away for her, so she stepped out before she stepped away. She had to know if she could bear it, to live another life so she could survive, and she could. I understood.”

“You were right, Angie,” Eliza whispered as they heard the click of the latch on the front door, “He did what he needed to survive. Now I have to, too.”

“I’ll be right here when you do, Bethy,” Angelica promised as she helped her sister to her feet, steeling them both to face the bubbly tirade of five children with their mother’s soft heart and nothing but admiration for their father. 

 

 


End file.
